You may have been away for Christmas and the New Year or simply switched off. You may therefore have missed Paul Goodman's four reasons why Cameron couldn't win a majority at the next election. I begged to differ. So did Grant Shapps. Most interesting, however, were the responses of some on the Left. Many on the Left simply do not share the Right's pessimism about Cameron's chances.

To cheer those readers who return 'to school' today here are a few of their arguments...

At Labour Uncut Atul Hatwal focuses on Labour's GROWING disadvantage on economic trust. At Labour Uncut he wrote (my emphasis):

"Labour is 11% behind on economic competence and no opposition has gone on to win the next election when trailing the government on the economy, after two and half years... We are now further behind the Tories on the economy than at the time of the last election, and that’s after all of the pain of the past two and a half years. Noone in any position of leadership within the party has proffered any type of explanation or plan to turn this deficit around, other than to keep on doing what has palpably failed since 2010."

For Dan Hodges Labour isn't polling any where near as well as it should be polling at this stage of a very tricky parliament. Given, he writes, "the omnishambolic year the Government has just had, and the fact the country is teetering on the edge of a triple-dip recession with real term incomes stagnating, Labour still can only just scrape a double-digit lead and still cannot consistently break 40%." Hodges continues by arguing that Labour's relatively small lead is flattered by an unnaturally inflated UKIP vote and a temporarily depressed LibDem vote. He concludes: "Bring the Ukip and Lib Dem support into realistic alignment, and Labour’s lead vanishes instantly. Ed Miliband’s current poll lead is an illusion."

After Stephan Shakespeare I was probably one of the first pessimists about Tory chances at the next election. In October 2011 I launched these Conservative Majority pages because of my concerns that the party still had to climb a huge mountain at the next election. I set out the challenge then. The rise of UKIP in 2012 and the collapse of the boundary review have only made the climb to the first Conservative majority since 1992 look even steeper. I can't disagree with the 88% of Tory members who don't expect a Tory majority after polling day.

Although I remain downbeat about Tory prospects I'm not defeatist. Can the next election be won? Can it be won outright? Although unlikely the answer to both questions has to be yes. Events, of course, can come to the PM's rescue but let me offer three key reasons that don't rely on crossing our fingers:

We didn't maximise our vote at the last election: I have always been amazed at the Tory leadership's unwillingness to face up to the botched nature of the 2010 general election and the Tory leadership's persistent insistence that they maximised the Tory vote. The 2010 campaign was poorly run. Our campaign had no clear message because of infighting in and around Cameron. The debates were a terrible mistake. Our manifesto had few retail offers, focusing on the untested Big Society idea. The Lib Dems found a way of offering tax cuts to the low-paid but we did not. A full post-mortem is here.

What's wrong with the Right? Throughout this week we'll be looking at weaknesses in how the conservative movement thinks and how it operates. We'll be thinking about the changes we still need to make in order to end our four election run of failing to win a majority. Today I want us to consider if we have what in America David Frum is calling a 'Conservative Entertainment Complex';

On last night's World Tonight I claimed that the loss of boundary reviews was the single worst political event to hit the Tories since 1992 and Black Wednesday*. Was I exaggerating?

When the Parliamentary and Voting Constituencies Bill was passed I celebrated the moment, noting that the introduction of fair-sized seats of equal population could boost the number of Tory MPs at the next election by up to twenty. That was certainly Conservative HQ's view. This morning the hope of boundaries fairness** is close to death, if not dead. After having explicitly said there that there was no connection between Lords reform and equal-sized seats Nick Clegg has u-turned and claimed there needs to be a connection.

The Liberal Democrats: now closer to their Coalition partner on economic matters...

I studied the durability of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition as the last election campaign drew to a close. Three points quickly became clear. First, changes made to the Conservatives under David Cameron's leadership had drawn the parties closer together: a new stress on the environment, a sympathy for civil liberties, the commitment to spend at least 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid (this last shift took place under Michael Howard, but Mr Cameron projected it in a way that his predecessor had not). Second, the two parties were now closer on the economy. The rise of the Orange Bookers - David Laws, Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne, Ed Davey, Vince Cable, Steve Webb - was a sign of a change of heart among the Liberal Democrats.

This shift turned out to be substantial, by the way. Messrs Huhne, Cable and Clegg may have been respectively difficult for their partners over AV, Beecroft and nearly everything, but they cannot be accused of flinching from George Osborne's Plan A. Mr Huhne was a convinced supporter of deficit reduction even before the election. And Mr Cable, perhaps the most senior representative of the party's social democrat wing, has not wavered from the Treasury course since it took place. It would probably have been fatal to the Coalition had he not stood shoulder-to-shoulder the Chancellor. He has done so, and Tories should honour it.

...But as far away as ever on "gut" ones: the EU, the ECHR, constitutional reform

However, Liberal Democrat movement on economic issues was more than offset, to my mind, by the party's outlook on a whole set of other ones. These could be labelled social or constitutional ones, but citing them shows that a more atavistic label is in order: the EU, the ECHR, law and order, immigration control, electoral reform, Lords reform, English votes for English laws. These are gut issues: views on them tend to be less thought than felt. And the fact is that when it comes to these matters the instincts of Conservatives pull one way and those of Libereal Democrats the other. The latter remain, emotionally, a centre-left party.

A few months ago when I started arguing that the next election might be difficult to win it was an unpopular argument. Many in the party thought that Ed Miliband was easily beatable. Things have moved on since then with dark clouds descending across the party. My view hasn't changed and it's not recent events that are uppermost in my mind but various structural factors. No sitting PM, for example, has increased their vote share since 1974. Labour has been hugely strengthened by the mass defection of left-leaning Lib Dem voters to the red corner. UKIP is biting chunks out of our own core vote. As yesterday's YouGov polling on the Right/Left brands proved, detoxification has failed. With only 20% of the cuts made we are also busy (some would say unavoidably) retoxifying ourselves.

But enough of this pessimism or, depending on your outlook, realism.

Here's the key question: Can Cameron complete mission impossible and overcome these trends?

Stephan began by arguing that, while there was much uncertainty, he thought the most likely scenario was that David Cameron would still be Prime Minister after the next election. He reprised the main message of his column from last Tuesday and its conclusion that the Tory willingness to make tough decisions - in which Cameron enjoys a 5-to-1 advantage over Ed Miliband - "could be a very valuable perception if at election time people still feel as insecure as they do now". He urged the party not to worry about being likeable but to focus on level-headed competence.

But if Cameron is, in Stephan's view, lilkely to remain PM he thinks it unlikely that he'll be leader of a majority Conservative government. He points to four factors that may well prevent Cameron from winning enough extra Tory seats:

"1) It is very unlikely that Labour will go backwards at the next election.

2) The boundary changes may not happen.

3) The LibDems are likely to recover at least a little (and in any case will do better in their strongholds than the national vote suggests).

4) Unexpected events are more likely to favour Labour - I simply invoke the principle of mean reversion."

It is, therefore, in Cameron's interest to focus on maintaining friendly relations with the Liberal Democrats rather than taking risky steps that will probably not produce a Tory government but may push the Liberal Democrats into Labour's arms. That is Stephan's assessment of Cameron's calculation but not necessarily the course that Stephan would pursue himself. A factor that may be in Cameron's mind is whether he would prefer to rely on Laws et al or Brady et al for getting his legislation passed.

But let's look for a moment at that word 'risky' and examine which is the riskier option for Cameron - maximising the possibilities for continuing coalition or maximising the possibility of a Tory majority.

I pay tribute to Neil O'Brien, Policy Excxhange's Director, for putting this important piece of work together. As I've blogged before, in its second decade PX is adopting a very welcome focus on the striving classes. Neil has written about 'Modernisation 2.0' for today's Guardian.

MAIN POINTS

The public sector dimension to the North / South divide

Working class (DE) voters in the South are more likely to vote Conservative than middle class (AB) voters in the North (page 5) but there is an important public/ private sector split to this. In households, for example, where both adults work in the public sector the Conservatives lag by 32%. Where there's one public sector worker the deficit is 18%. Where all workers are private sector the Conservative lead is 9% (page 26).

The problem of being in third place

Three-way marginals have become rare and in their place have emerged a series of different two horse races (largely between Con and Lab, Con and Lib Dem or Lab and Lib Dem - Scotland is obviously different). This has meant when a party falls into third place it falls into a poor third place (page 7). If the Tories are third-placed in a lot of northern cities this can mean the party's overall vote share falls quite steeply:

The dismal illustration above is taken from the biggest-ever study of the attitude of ethnic and religious minorities to the Conservative Party - Degrees of separation, commissioned by Lord Ashcroft and published today.

It is a word cloud of associations the party's brand provoked when tested on those who took part in this study. I read the report yesterday both to read it for itself and to test it against my view on these matters, as previously set out on this site. My fourfold take is:

The ethnic minority vote threatens the Conservatives with demographic decline. Only 16 per cent of all ethnic minority voters supported the party in 2010. They are more resistant to voting Tory than the white majority. Ethnic minority votes made up under one in ten of the population in 2001. By 2050 ethnic minorities will make up a fifth of the population.

The party leadership has traditionally reacted to the challenge with tokenism and ignorance. It has assumed that this resistance can be broken down by a few appointments near the top. By getting policy right. By assuming that all ethnic and religious groups are essentially the same - and that what may work for one may work for all.

There is no substitute for hard work from the bottom up. By all means work on policy, and appoint more ethnic minority members to the top table - if like others they have the capability. But there is no substitute for a party presence on the ground, in the cities and suburbs where such voters are most likely to be found.

Target the groups that are most receptive to the Conservative message. The party has a moral responsibility to take its message to all Britons. But making a special pitch to those more likely to be won over applies as much here as elsewhere. For example, Britons of Indian origin are more likely to vote Tory than those of Pakistani origin.